Communication networks, including the Internet and privately owned intranets, are being used in increasingly diverse ways to provide people with goods and services as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Consumers and businesses already can purchase a wide variety of goods over the Internet. More recently, service providers have begun to sell their services, including professional services, over the Internet. These “remote services” include engineering services, medical services, legal services, accounting services, and the like, that may be provided by one or more vendors to a customer in a collaborative work environment, where the service can be delivered electronically (e.g., electronic reports, software models, software programs, data base records, and the like).
While communication networks may make it easier for a customer to search for and identify vendors with whom the customer may wish to do business, many of the traditional problems associated with purchasing, performing, delivering and accounting for services from vendors remain unchanged. A customer (whether a consumer or a business) still must review the credentials and the prices of a group of vendor candidates in order to select one or more vendors that will actually perform the job (or selected portions of the job). Additionally, remote services often require access to proprietary networks for integration and for data access. Unfortunately, this often creates costly and sometime intractable information technology (IT) security problems for both the vendor and the customer.
Furthermore, charging for remote services is a non-integrated task that must be separately managed. Internet-based remote services require the vendor and the customer to have knowledge regarding what entities are involved in a collaboration (such as e-mail addresses, individual names, and the like) and regarding what aspect(s) of the service are being provided (charge tracking, asking questions, reviewing materials, transferring data, and the like).
There are some commercially available products that allow individuals and business entities to work in a somewhat collaborative environment. For example, CITRIX SYSTEMS, INC. provides WINFRAME® application server software, which allows for remote access to, and remote operation of, computer programs. However, the WINFRAME® application server software assumes that the remote service provider is a “trusted” party and does not address security, accounting, or specific collaboration tasks. Microsoft Corporation provides NETMEETING™ software, which allows real-time conferencing over the Internet by two or more persons. However, NETMEETING™ ignores the accounting and billing aspects of a collaborative work environment, requires all parties to be operating simultaneously, and does not have specialized features to allow automated parties, such as computer-executed applications, to participate in the collaborative environment.
In sum, conventional collaborative work applications that are implemented over a common communication network frequently provide little more to customers and vendors than an on-line document repository, remote manipulation of data and applications, and basic e-mail services. A customer seeking a service still must perform a large amount of “overhead” work that is not related to the main job, such as searching for and evaluating vendors, tracking work flow, accounting for charges, coordinating between multiple vendors, and the like.
There is therefore a need in the art for systems and methods that allow customers and vendors (i.e., services providers) to work more efficiently in an on-line collaborative environment. In particular, there is a need in the art for systems and methods that allow a person or business entity (i.e., a customer) that requires a service to obtain that service quickly and cheaply from one or more qualified service providers without requiring the person or business entity to search for and evaluate vendors personally. More particularly, there is a need for a collaborative work environment application that can automatically track and provide accounting for services provided by one or more service providers associated with a customer-defined work project. There is a still further need for a collaborative work environment application that allows a customer to access automated services from one or more computer-executed applications. A further need exists for a collaborative work environment application that allows different steps in a work flow to be performed by one or more parties.